The Coziest Southern Potato Soup to Warm Your Bones (Tater Soup)

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Simple and satisfying, hearty yet quite healthy, Southern Potato Soup (called “Tater Soup” in Appalachia where I’m from) is more of a genre all its own then some stone-set thing. This stuff has been around for as long as pots have been simmering away on stove tops. There are plenty of different iterations of Southern Potato Soup out there, to be sure. My recipe here allows for you to improvise and riff on the core ingredients as you see fit. You like it a little creamier? Cool, I’ll give you some tips for that. Don’t care for mushrooms or peas? You can totally leave those out. This is an absolutely delicious one-pot recipe that should be in every home cook’s repertoire. It also happens to be my husband’s favorite food, which you probably care about not at all!

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Southern Potato Soup (Tater Soup) Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best kind of potato to use for potato soup?

The good news? You can and should use any kind of potato you like, looks good at the store, or happen to already have on hand. As long as they are chopped into bite sized pieces, any potato will work nicely in a soup. There’s no hard and fast rule here. But for my money, I like to use a gold or yellow skinned potato, usually the smaller ones, as the skin is much thinner and never requires any peeling. The potato flesh is also very tender, and yields the perfect balance between creamy and firm, which is what we’re looking for here.

Do you have to the peel potatoes for potato soup?

Absolutely not! You are certainly welcome to peel whatever you like, but to me, part of the beauty of this recipe is the fact that it comes together in one pot, and requires very little effort on the cooked part. I don’t peel my carrots. I wash my mushrooms, I don’t bother to wipe them off individually. And I do not peel a single potato. The use of gold or yellow potatoes means you’ve got a thinner, more tender skin which you won’t notice at all when you’re eating it. So, don’t worry about peeling in this case.

What makes potato soup thick?

Potato soup can be thickened a few different ways, depending on what you feel like doing, frankly. You can blend a little bit of the soup in your blender, pouring that puree back into the pot to give it some extra body and richness. You could use a roux, sprinkling flour or cornstarch over the sauteed vegetables before adding any liquid. Or, as we’re doing in this recipe, you can add a slurry, which is nothing more than a little bit of cornstarch or all-purpose flour that is moistened with the hot soup and then add it back into the pot to quickly thicken everything up just a little bit. The way you choose to thicken your soup is personal, and up to you! I typically opt for a slurry or roux because these techniques work very well, and keep me from having to wash my blender.

How do I make bland potato soup taste better?

Any recipe that involves the potato also needs to involve some very generous, very intentional seasoning. Potato soup is one of the most delicious things, so long as it is seasoned properly. Your potato soup is bland? Try adding a little more salt. That’s usually the answer to any issue of blandness, no matter the recipe in question. A basic Appalachian style potato soup uses only a handful of simple ingredients, leaning on milk and water and often bouillon to create the brothy soup base. To keep that from veering into bland territory, you can add dried herbs, stock concentrate + actual stock, ample garlic, and always heroic cream cheese to the mix, as we do in this recipe. Blandness need not apply here.

What you’ll need to make this Southern Potato Soup (Tater Soup)

I suppose we could refer to this as the “ultimate Southern potato soup” because the ingredient list does go a little above and beyond what a standard version might employ. A classic Appalachian potato soup or Southern style “tater soup” usually contains little more than potatoes, celery, onion, milk, a little flour for thickening, dried thyme, and bouillon. Very simple, very easy.

Because I simply cannot help myself, I ratchet things up a few notches by adding some other kitchen essentials to knock the flavor all the way out of the park. That said, many of these things are optional. You can certainly use as many garlic cloves as you like, or none at all. Though I think not using garlic is never a good move, but that’s just me. I love what the mushrooms and peas do to potato soup, but they’re absolutely optional as well. You don’t even really need to use the carrots, but they add a lot of good nutrition and color to the basic mix. You technically don’t even need to use the slurry here, or any thickening agent, and you can just keep the soup consistency very thin and light. Ip to you!

INGREDIENTS

Olive oil, for cooking
16 to 20 ounces, give or take, yellow or gold (Dutch) potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces (no need to peel)
2 small onions, diced
3 celery stalks, diced
3 large carrots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
8 ounces Cremini or button mushrooms, sliced (optional)
3 teaspoons dried thyme (Italian seasoning also works nicely, as does Old Bay)
3 teaspoons stock concentrate, any variety you like (I use Better Than Bouillon vegetable or roasted garlic)
5 garlic cloves, minced or grated
32 ounces vegetable or chicken stock
1 heaping cup frozen peas
1 cup half and half
4 ounces cream cheese
3 teaspoons cornstarch or all-purpose flour

Serving suggestions: croutons, fresh bread, cornbread, or biscuits

How to Make This Southern Potato Soup

The method we’ll follow to build this beautiful pot of Southern potato soup is straightforward and simple, standard-op and honestly so easy. I try to keep things as streamlined for you as possible when I write recipes, and this Appalachian Potato Soup is no exception. We will begin by sauteing our vegetables and a bunch of olive oil, sand we’ll season them with salt and pepper. I’m talking about the potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery. These are the vegetables that are sturdier and thicker in their structure so they need a big head start, as compared to say, the sweet peas.

We’ll let those go on the stove top for about 10 minutes, before adding the mushrooms in. Then, we’ll go in with the garlic, stock concentrate, and thyme. About a minute is all that is needed to develop and bloom those flavors.

Lastly, in go the liquids. We’ll drown everything in the pot with a bunch of stock, you can use whatever stock you like there. You can add a little bit of water if needed, to fully submerge everything. Put the lid on and just let it simmer away until the potatoes are tender. Then, we’ll add the peas and the cream cheese and half and half to give it a nice creamy body. Lastly, we’ll thicken our soup a little bit with a slurry. That is just a combination of cornstarch, liquified and thinned out with some of the hot soup. This will immediately seize up and get to work thickening that broth as soon as it hits the pot and is brought up to a bubble.

DIRECTIONS for my Appalachian Potato Soup (Tater Soup)

Add a few glugs of oil to a large pot over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the potatoes, onion, celery, and carrots. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. Add the mushrooms, and cook 5 minutes more.
Add the thyme, stock concentrate, and garlic, and cook one minute more. Add the stock and give it all a good stir. If the contents of the pot are not fully submerged by the stock, add a little bit of water or extra stock until that is the case. Put the lid on the pot, and allow things to simmer over medium low for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork tender.
When the potatoes are tender, remove the lid and add the peas, half and half, and cream cheese, stirring to blend everything in. To thicken the soup, put the cornstarch in a small bowl and add just enough of the hot soup liquid to it to create a smooth mixture (a fork works well here). Pour this slurry back into the pot and bring it up to boil, then reduce to a simmer.
Season the Appalachian Potato Soup soup to taste with salt and pepper, and serve topped with freshly snipped chives and any manner of bread you see fit to use.